In Japan, with a flat rate of a data communication charge and an increase in a smartphone that can use the Internet and various applications, a data communication amount per a person has increased. In addition, many of smartphones and portable telephones each of which has an internet connection function have been able to be used as they are in a foreign country by roaming service, thereby being very convenient. On arrival at the foreign country, automatic connection to a communications company for which roaming can be performed is performed just by applying power to the portable telephone, so that a user can use the portable telephone without being aware of such as selection of a communications company.
On the other hand of such convenience, the charge at the roaming at the foreign country is different from the charge of that in the domestic country, so that it has tended that the call charge and data communication the charge become relatively high. Therefore, when the portable telephone is used in the foreign country, the user needs to pay attention so as to judge whether a communications company to which the portable telephone is connected corresponds to flat-rate service, and it is probable that a high fee is charged later if the user uses the portable telephone as usual without notice.
Due to such a background, in some communications companies, there is a function to notify the user of a message that “the charge becomes relatively high for a call and data communication at the foreign country” when connection to a roaming destination is performed on arrival at the foreign country.
Because such a function is used only to alert the user, it is impossible to avoid occurrence of the relatively high charge due to unilateral incoming call and a mail to be received from a counter party even when the user wants to try to avoid the usage at the foreign country as much as possible. In the case of a telephone, there is no problem as long as the traveler notes the usage because the counter party disconnects incoming call if the user does not reply to the incoming call for a certain period of time, however, in the case of mail reception, a communication amount the charge of which is relatively high occurs even when the user notes the data communication because the data communication is performed forcibly.
The user can also set the portable telephone so that a mail is forced not to be received at the foreign country before leaving the domestic country, however, it is conceivable that the user travels abroad while the user forgets to perform the setting.
In addition, in a smartphone, which has been prevalent in recent years, there are many cases in which an installed application periodically performs data communication and the data communication is performed independently of the intention of the user.
In a smartphone in which various applications are allowed to be installed, it is difficult for the user to grasp an application that periodically performs data communication, and it is not realistic that setting of each application is changed, and there is also an application in which change to setting that communication is not performed is not allowed.
In order to avoid the data communication that is forcibly performed independently of the intention of the user as described above, the data communication is needed to be set to OFF immediately after the power of the portable telephone is turned on when the user arrives at the foreign country. Generally, in the portable telephone and the smartphone, a function to set the data communication to OFF is included, and when the data communication is set to OFF, data communication through a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), and a W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) network, or the like cannot be performed, however, a call and data communication through Wi-Fi (Wireless fidelity) can be performed.
However, if it takes a long time to perform the setting after the power is applied, it is well possible that mail reception and data communication by an application are performed during that time. Therefore, in order to eliminate the burden of setting and remember to set the data communication to OFF, there is conceived a method of automatically changing the setting on the portable telephone side when it is detected that the user is in the foreign country.
For example, in Patent Documents 1 and 2, there has been discussed a technology of using an identification code of a country that is transmitted from a base station, a GPS (Global Positioning System) signal, and the like as a method by which a portable telephone automatically recognizes that the user is in the foreign country and setting of the portable telephone is automatically changed.